Latest / REAP/SOW / These immigrant meatpacking workers are risking it all in a labor fight
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- This transcript was exported on 02/22/2026 - view latest version here Teresa Cotsirilos: You're listening to REAP/SOW, dispatches from the front lines of food, farming and the environment. I'm your host, Teresa Cotsirilos. Last month, hundreds of thousands of Haitian migrants faced an uncertain future as the Trump administration fought in federal court to revoke their legal status and deport them. But despite these threats, the largely immigrant union workers at a JBS beef plant in Greeley, Colorado, many of them recent arrivals from Haiti, voted by an overwhelming margin to go on strike. They're protesting poor working conditions in what could become the first sanctioned walk out at a major meatpacking plant in decades. My colleague, senior editor, Ted Genoways just published a great story on this with our partners at Mother Jones and he recently sat down with REAP/SOW to talk about his story. I'll let Editor-in-Chief Theodore Ross take it from here. Theodore: All right, tell us a little bit about this story. Who are these folks who were voting to strike, and why do they matter? Why this story? Ted: Yes. The story is about a group of workers, the workforce at the JBS beef-packing plant in Greeley, Colorado. JBS happens to be the largest beef producer in the world and the largest beef producer in the United States, and Greeley-- Theodore: A large contributor to the Trump administration as well, as I understand. [crosstalk] Ted: Exactly, and Greeley is their headquarters, and the plant in Greeley is their flagship plant. It caught our attention a little over a year ago when the local union that represents the workers there, The United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7, announced that they believed that a large number of Haitian migrants had been the victims of human trafficking as they were brought into Greeley to work in the plant. Their description of the circumstances out there was something that we investigated for another story for Mother Jones that was the beginning of a series that we've been publishing now for a year with FERN following the-- Theodore: Trouble on the Line, folks. Go check it out. [crosstalk] Ted: Trouble on the Line, and, essentially, what we discovered was that these workers had been recruited using a TikTok video that had been produced with information and some assistance from HR at JBS, and promised that there would be a place to stay and good jobs. When people arrived, what they found was squalid conditions at a roadside motel where they were put in, six to eight to a room, and then put on some of the most difficult jobs on the line. Not only were they tough jobs, but that overnight shift, the night shift, the workers say, and now a class action suit alleges, was running much faster than the line that was staffed by more established workers on the day shift. Theodore: Let's talk about that line for a second because I think it's a really interesting detail. For those of you who don't work in meatpacking plants, which Ted and I do not, but the idea is to get as much meat off the bone as you possibly can. You want to be efficient with the meat that you are producing, and there are different standards that you could be held to for how much meat you get off the bone. The previous standard, Ted, I don't remember what they called it, was it the "Mostly Clean Bone," or something like that? Ted: It was "The Clean Bone Standard." [crosstalk] Theodore: "Clean Bone Standard." Then they increased that standard for these workers to something called "The White Bone Standard," which meant you got all that meat off. For those of you who are eating meat at home, think about what that really means as a worker in a plant with fast-moving animals who've just been slaughtered, and knives everywhere, and a lot of things happening. You have to make sure that bone is white. That is not a very easy standard to meet for people who are not paid all that well and are doing something that's pretty dangerous. Ted: To quantify this as best we can, the day shift, according to the class action suit now brought by a group of workers, was running at an average of about 300 cows per hour that were being processed. 300 head of cattle per hour. On the night shift, the B shift, where the Haitian workers were largely placed, the average was about 370 head per hour, and they said it was regularly running over 400, and they recorded it at speeds up to 440 head per hour. If you think about that, as you said, these are extremely dangerous jobs where you're working with knives and meat hooks, and in close proximity to other workers. Suddenly having to do that work as much as 50% faster than the workers on the day shift, as you might imagine, the union said this was increasing the rate of injuries, both traumatic injuries, such as cuts and being jabbed with the meat hook, but also repetitive stress injuries, that if you're working this much faster. Among other things, they didn't have time to sharpen their knives, and so they're working with dull knives and having to exert more effort, and having severe pain in their hands and wrists. We had reported on all of this. As I've mentioned, there was a class action suit that was brought by a group of workers. That was brought after the formal complaint that had been submitted to the National Labor Relations Board was dismissed. It was dismissed after the composition of the board was changed by Donald Trump. After JBS was the largest donor to his second inauguration, the composition was changed, and then they dismissed the complaint against JBS. Theodore: The workers decided to stage a strike vote. Now, I want to set this in a little bit of context, and then you could tell us about what happened, right? You have this plant, nearly-- what is it? Something like 90% of the workers there are foreign-born immigrants, some are refugees, people from all over the world. Of that 90%, something like 40%, I think it is, are Haitian, correct? Ted: Yes, on the B shift, that is certainly true, or that is near enough. Theodore: Okay, so this is more than 1,000 Haitian workers in this plant who are doing this job. They're doing this job, many of them are here legally under a particular kind of visa called "Temporary Protected Status," which allows people from around the world to come into the country if their country is subject to natural disasters or political instability. They're allowed to be here, and they're allowed to work. It's a temporary visa. However, many of these folks have been here for a long time under this visa program. It's a huge political focus of the Trump Administration in their national immigration crackdown. What they are trying to do is end the TPS status for Haitian workers, as they've done for workers from other countries, and this is all coming to a head as this strike vote is being held. It means that the workers at this plant, these Haitian workers in these difficult circumstances, are going to do something that's very public, which is a strike vote, in a time period when the Trump Administration is looking to push legal Haitian immigrants out of the country. Whatever you may think about TPS, whatever you may think about immigration in general, there is some bravery involved in saying, "I am willing to risk my life in this country in order to push for my rights in this workplace." That's the context that-- Am I wrong? Show me where I'm wrong, Ted. [chuckles] Ted: No, you're completely right. The thing that I think is especially striking, because of complaints about the use of TPS over the years, the standards had tended to increase over time, and by the time that this most recent wave of Haitian migrants was arriving, the standard was essentially that you had to show that someone had tried to kill you in Haiti in order to be granted admission to the United States, and, in many cases, the only way that you could be granted entrance was to be applying from a port of entry. What many of the people were doing; someone had tried to kill them, they fled Haiti, often to somewhere in Latin America, and then began a trek, many of them on foot, to the US-Mexico border. You're talking about people who've had these nightmarish experiences, have come to the US looking for protection, and, as you say, have followed the legal system and been granted entrance and are working within that system. Among other things, they are legally employed, they have work visas, they are paying taxes, all of those sorts of things, and now, what Donald Trump is pushing to do is to revoke that status to send them back. In the initial wave of reporting, a round of reporting that we did, many people said, "Look, if we get sent back, it's a death sentence. People know that we have fled the country. If you put us all onto a plane and fly us back to Port-au-Prince, they'll be waiting for us at the airport, and they will kill us as we come off the plane." The stakes couldn't be higher, and yet-- [crosstalk] Theodore: They're still doing it. Let's not hide the ball. Let's be kind to our audience here. What happened in the strike vote? Ted: They gathered at the most undramatic of possible spaces, they gathered in the ballroom- Theodore: DoubleTree Hotel, yes. [laughs] I love that. Ted: -of the DoubleTree Hotel in Greeley, Colorado, with a very large wooden box with a slot carved in the top and a stencil on the side that said, "Vote Box." The members of the union came, they checked in, were given slips of blue paper, and all that they did was put an 'X' next to either "strike" or "no strike." Everyone told me-- they were like, "This is a strike vote for sure." I had checked with Kim Cordova, the president of the local-- and said, "You have to have 2/3rds of the vote. That's a lot of people. Are you really sure that this is going to be a strike vote?" And Kim assured me that she had been holding off a vote for months, that people were really eager to make their displeasure known with the company, and she was absolutely right. At the end of the evening, when they dumped out all of the ballots and counted them up, thousands of votes, 99% of those votes were cast for "strike." Theodore: All right, that's the context of the story that you put out. Right now, as I understand it, they had the strike authorization vote. They pushed that into the hands of JBS to react to their demands, and we could potentially see a strike in the not-too-distant future. This interview may come out in a little while, so the events may get ahead of us, but that's where it stands right now. I want to move on to my next question for you, which is-- this is going to give you a little opportunity to brag. We always ask, what's the biggest obstacle to your reporting here? I think you can point out that you and Mary Anne Andrei, your wife, who's an audio producer, a photographer, and a video producer, were the only reporters allowed in to document this strike, so maybe this isn't an obstacle. Tell me how you got in that room, Ted, and what does it mean to be in that room? Ted: Yes. Well, there's a truism in journalism that you get a lot of access by simply showing up and continuing to show up, and that has really been true in this case. When Mary Anne and I did the initial reporting there in September of '24, we asked people often to stay in touch with us, to let us know as the story unfolded, and people did stay in touch with us. The thing that everyone kept saying was, "Show you're serious about this by coming back," and so we did multiple rounds on that initial story, and we went back, now that there was this big development, and just having that commitment really opened doors. Now, this is my chance to brag about FERN and why people should give money to FERN. In almost every case where we were doing the reporting for this story-- it was over the course of more than a year, it was because of some recent development that demanded quick travel. In every case, we knew that we had an interested partner in Mother Jones, but we were moving faster than, sometimes, the editorial wheels can turn at a large organization like Mother Jones. FERN provided that funding and got us on the road, and got us out talking to people while the more bureaucratic parts of things were worked out on the editorial side. That has also been a huge advantage, being able to react, that when someone calls and says, "Hey, something big is about to happen, you need to get here," that we are able to jump in the car and drive to Colorado and work things out along the way. Theodore: I think it's fantastic, and I agree with you; everybody should give FERN lots and lots of money. Ted: Lots of money, right? Yes. Theodore: Yes, or just send us an email. Just tell us, "Hi." We want to hear from you in any way that you can. It's not just transactional; we'd like to hear from you. Final question, and I'm curious to see what you think is the biggest takeaway of this story, which seems to have many elements of important things all happening at once. Ted: Yes. Well, at the end of this, when the strike was authorized, I asked Kim Cordova, "Are you not worried that a judge has briefly stayed the deportation of Haitian migrants who have had TPS status rescinded?" But it's been appealed already to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court, as you mentioned, has upheld the administration's ability to immediately rescind and act upon revoked TPS for other migrant groups. There's every reason to believe that this stay is going to be a short one. "Are you afraid that you're going to get all of your workforce out on a picket line, spread out along the highway outside of this JBS beef-packing plant, and it's going to be an opportunity for ICE to simply roll up and arrest everybody?" Kim certainly allowed that she thought that was a major concern, but when I posed it to the workers themselves, what they said was, 'Well, we came to this country believing that it would protect us. We believe that the American people will not allow that to happen." They also said, "We came here to engage in a democratic process," and that's what they were allowed to do with the union vote. They were able to say, "We want our voices to be heard, and we believe that people will not allow us to be deported because we have cast the democratic vote." I don't know if that's true. Honestly, I felt, often, during the day of the vote, that the immigrant population that was coming in there to cast their ballots had a lot more faith in this country than I do right now. I fear that a grand show of cruelty is exactly what this administration may be looking for. We'll continue to follow it and see what happens. Certainly, I hope-- to the people who have faith in the American people and in the American system, I hope they're right. Theodore: I hope they're right, too. [music] Theodore: All right, so if you want to read this story, and of course, you do want to read this story, you should check it out at our website, www.thefern.org. It's also up at the Mother Jones website. REAP/SOW is also available on our website or on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts. It's also up on YouTube. It's at our channel @FERNnews. That's it for today. If you want to learn more about FERN's dispatches from the frontlines of food, farming, and the environment, or again, if you want to donate to support our work, go to www.thefern.org. Teresa Cotsirilos: REAP/SOW is a production of the Food and Environment Reporting Network. Our executive producers are Theodore Ross, Tom Laskawy and Brent Cunningham. Our sound engineer is Lauryn Newson. Our audio & video producer is Amanda Vicari. I'm your host, Teresa Cotsirilos. Find out more about FERN and donate to support our independent non-profit reporting at www.thefern.org. RS Ep.31 Extra Haitians Strike Ted Genoways.mp3 (Completed: 02/21/2026) Transcript by GoTranscript.com